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What a crazy day. Headlines are just writing themselves…. Crossfire in Wilmington wounds two ladies just sitting on their porch…..
Is Williams qualified as mayor to take the reins and go forward? He certainly ran as such. But since, we have gotten only talk…
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.”
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing…
How long has this been going on?
The answer of what needs to happen is pretty obvious. As cautioned elsewhere, Mayor Williams needs to stop saying “stop and frisk.” Just the sound of that causes trouble…
Instead, round up everyone you see loitering or jaywalking and take them in for processing… The ordnances are already on the books and everyone is frisked before going into a police car… Nothing illegal at all.
Start saying “we’ll clear the streets of loiterers and jaywalkers.”… then do it. The difference will be evident in just one day.
I was awaiting the Mayor’s comments on what he would do about the violence in our city….
“Nothing. It’s the Parent’s fault” he said. If one remembers the campaign taking place just a year ago last week, one remembers the current mayor Dennis Williams as a candidate lambasting the former Baker administration and its proxy, Bill Montgomery, for echoing these same exact sentiments.
“You’re not doing anything about it; blaming vague root causes is not going to take care of the real problem, which is bullets flying up and down our city streets!” he repeated many times of his campaign.
This week’s announcement was a tremendous statement. It acknowledges failure. When one falls back upon the same defenses as one’s political opponent, that means one has failed.
Blaming vague routes for the problem. Here is the reaction to Dennis’s statement.
“Ok, Dennis. You are mayor. Fix it.. Fix every parent taking care of their child. How are you going to do that?”
The answer is no one can do that. No one can pass an enforceable law demanding good parenting. Therefore using this excuse is one’s acknowledgement that it can’t be fixed. The solution is then still out there, still needed. There are very viable solutions out there to counter this problem; and answers come from recognizing first what the problem is.
The real problem is heroin. Come right out and say it… I will take the liberty to write here how Dennis “should have” handled the question…
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Hi, I’m Dennis Williams, and I approve of this message. When I took over as mayor of the City of Wilmington, little did I know that the tightening of the control of prescription drugs would become so effective, it would make heroin the least expensive alternative. The heroin business in Wilmington is booming. When criminal businesses, which are businesses run by rules outside the canons of law, become profitable, they change ownership by means also outside the canons of law.
Heroin is dealt in this fashion these days. A supplier drives in from a safe spot outside, drops off prepackaged bags, and gives you a bill of sale. If you choose to deal, you sell the product, then pay the seller for his money. If the seller doesn’t get his cut, you don’t last long. Now you have to sell. You sell heroin compartmentalized so no one knows the whole operation. One person you pick makes contacts at Glasgow High, another at Brandywine, you pick one at Olive Garden, one at Red Lobster, etc. One sells to the local IBEW; another supplies Bank of America. These are people you know; and they sell to people they know.
Bringing it on property is too dangerous. They deal in phone numbers. A cell phone number puts you in touch with a guy on the street corner. You call, say who gave you the number, and get told where to make the transaction. You put the address in your GPS, and drive. You call, he comes over to say hi, you say hi back and hand him the money, he drops the bag in your car, says have a nice evening, and you drive off…. You and your friends share the heroin and take off to go clubbing in Philly with no more thought to it than like having a beer before hitting the road.
Obviously the sectors close to exits off 95 are prime commercial real estate. Most of our shootings happen right off 202 and 95. Easy off – easy on. If you are selling down-stream, you get fewer customers… If you are selling $200 a night, and the guys up the street whom you can plainly see are doing $2000 a night, you are going to look at all options on how to increase you sales. In this business, it is all about location.
Almost all our shootings are a result of drug trafficking. Whether for non-payment, for elimination, or for reprisals, almost all our shootings are related to this industry… Very similar I might add, the same way all of Chicago’s shootings were related to the illegal alcohol trafficked through the Prohibition years in that metropolitan area.
Changes are required beyond me to fix this problem completely. For this is an ongoing war that can never be won by using the same weapons we’ve been using over the past 50 years. People are resourceful; if they want something they find a way to get it, around every roadblock we can impose. They do not stop wanting this product. The alcohol violence in Chicago only went away when alcohol again became legal. It is time to consider what might happen, and how we could control it if we chose to make heroin legal. For when one can buy heroin in Wal*Mart, with no stigma, and trust that some government entity has verified its purity, and lack of harmful substances, no one in their right mind would drive into the city to make a transaction for what could turn out to be corn starch laced with arsenic. And if no one is driving into the city, there is no money to be made. If there is no money to be made, there is nothing to be gained from the illicit drug trade. If there is no money in crime, crime goes away…
There are very easy ways if we make it legal, to control usage. One, small nightly dispensations could become the rule, so overdosing would be impossible. Two, addicts show up regularly become readily apparent , and could be directed by Wal*Mart to various appropriate detoxing agencies. The possibilities are endless. But it would not destroy society because it would be regulated and taxed and otherwise like every other vice that has followed the same pursuit, liquor, beer, wine, cigarettes, cigars, gambling, could become a beneficial revenue source for the government…
Without going this far, there are some things that can help immediately, maybe save a life or two, though not take care of the problem. If you see a drug deal, call the anonymous number. Say, “I have someone dealing on the corner of Baynard and 22nd.” Dealers’ fear of the unknown is our greatest defense against these street corner transactions ever happening. When we start getting calls before murders take place, fewer murders will take place. Putting up cameras just moves the transactions to where there are no cameras. Same with putting police on corners. Our best bet is to have dealers so fearful someone will rat them out, they don’t come out, anywhere. They find another way to sell. In doing so, we’ve destroyed the property value of the prime real estate, so that it is not worth killing for. We cut crime.
With your help, we can do that. However everyone needs to recognize that the problem is one of business. These are business killings. They are about business. People need money to live and unfortunately with an illegal business, a lot of people have to die to keep that type of business alive and afloat.
Likewise picking up the random car bringing the packets in, means another car gets dispatched the same night and makes the drive down to fill the hole in supply…
The same with guns.
We can also crack down. Make it unprofitable so the sellers choose to sell in Elmere, New Castle City, Newark, Christiana, Claymont. The crime moves there and we cheer our gun deaths are down. All we did was transfer the problem to my friend Tom Gordan.
The long term option is to make it legal, and by doing so, suck all the money out of that business. If one can walk into Walgreens, present an ID, sign forms and pay $2 a small bag, and then go home and sleep it off, the $50 bags on the street corner are going to disappear. The same person, goes home and sleeps it off, in either way. One way costs them $50, costs us $150 a bag in trying to interdict it, and continues eating up our young urban men. The other way, generates taxes, keeps control, drops crime, makes money for Walgreens, creates new jobs, and allows for $48 dollars to be spent into our economy for other commodities. Again, either way, the same person sleeps it off.
I am calling for a new conversation, a bold, innovative way we can get drugs off our streets entirely. I’m am calling for a way we can remove the market of illegal substances out of our neighborhoods, off our streets, and into the business world where it really belongs. It’s a business and should have the legitimacy it deserves. It has a demand that will be met, if not legally, then it must be met illegally. We haven’t changed that in 50 years of trying. Only the opposite approach, of making it legal, controlled, available, and legitimizing it, will take the illegal activity currently devoted to filling that demand….
It is the only smart thing to do.
Every smart thing requires a person of immense courage to start the ball rolling. Although I have no more courage than the next person, I do recognize that I am in this position at this time, and must do something. I am starting the call to legalize these narcotics as being our most effective method of attacking the ills of this business while it is allowed to remain illegitimate.
This is very unlike my predecessors blaming the parents… I can do nothing about fixing parents. I can work our legislators and become a public spokesperson for making this business legal again, so we, society in general, can control it…
There will be those who through shallow thinking may not agree with this long term solution. Not everyone is smart. But, we have an great opportunity in this city, with a complete lack of Republican countervailing power which always make progress unattainable because of their higher-than-thou moralistic posturing, to actually make something happen. We have the resolve, we just need the release to allow us to make progress happen.
The arguments they will use against it, are the same once used against smoking, against drinking, and against gambling. WE legitimized all those businesses and the sky didn’t fall. It is time to accept rationality and begin the process of this one… In the meantime we will continue fighting against the symptoms of a social disease our current processes will never fix. Any help or information before a crime is to be committed or immediately afterwards, will be highly appreciated in our endeavor to make Wilmington, which is truly a wonderful city, again become a great place to live…… For despite our inability to eliminate the overall big picture, every life we save, is an actual life we save… There can be put no price too high on that. We need your calls.
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That is what Williams should have said.
Jump out squads are the new topic. What a dumb name. I glad Mayor Williams is distancing himself from such. It is funny how names get formed. I think it was Mayor Baker or Sills whose press agent when pressed, was the person who named them such? It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but a better name would be something that is less aggressive.
Of course sounding tough as an intimidating factor always makes one feel big. But it also acts in a different way. It imposes upon a community their powerlessness. First against the criminals, Then against the justice system.
Both Williams and the Police Chief know this!.
A city’s police force is there as part of the city residents life experience, and their job is to protect the good of which they are apart and diminish the power of the bad, the criminal element.
A better name would be something like: “Citizen’s Response Team”. For after all, they are there only at the behest of citizens who want their neighborhoods to be safe. Let the criminal elements call them “jump out squads”;… let that be the word on the streets. But officially, a name that conveys the idea that the police are just an extension of society at large, they are there to do what society wants, is far more appropriate in this case than one of surprise and intimidation.
Neighborhood society has no problem with these individuals involved. Most grew up there; they’ve known them since they were little kids. The problem is crime, and every individual in a neighborhood has a choice on whether they want to side with crime, or side with stopping it….
The election on September 11th, I think emphatically gave a mandate that a very large majority of Wilmington sides with those forces stopping it.
Now there is something every citizen can do….
I messed up. As I pulled of the side street and onto the main street, a parked car held me up, It was some type of SUV with New Jersey plates. Leaning into its passenger window, was a big black dude, scruffy beard, Army issued overcoat, black pants, who as I pulled up, backed away, and as the car pulled off, the crossed the street in front of me….
If I’d been thinking, I could have pulled my phone, looked like I was talking or texting (as do 99% of Delawareans when they are behind the wheel anyways), and clicked a picture of the car complete with plates and the guy doing the drop.
I could have then sent that to police.
Police later show up at the house of the car’s owner, Ask what they were doing at that location. Who was in their window? Then monitor any call going out from that house that says: “Dude, you better be careful…someone’s on to you… Really man? What did they say?”
So, what if the police advertised a hotline or email address or account where anonymous picture of licensed plates of drug deals in progress, could be drop loaded? How many citizens of Wilmington would love to turn in the street bully they’re deathly afraid of, but can’t because no system exists where the information is completely untraceable?
Why hasn’t this been thought of before?
Rule is: these pictures can never be used as court evidence and be traceable. They can only serve as probable cause, upon which all secondary evidence can then be admitable….
And it would cost nothing.
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kavips 